I appreciate this thread so much! And i really appreciate Tboneous comments about what is worship. I agree with most of this discussion, but i feel it does detract from the intent of this tread for sure!

That said...we as Worship Musicians should be striving for an excellence that is uniquely ours. We like many many other churches are just big "worship cover bands" we try to replicate, duplicate, & manipulate everyone else's tones and effects...which is where i appreciate the comment about how there is not many uniquely outstanding guitarists in this Christian Music era. Phil Keaggy and Lincoln Brewster are probably the top Christian Music Guitarists of All Time...and being a huge LB fan his tones are uniquely his!

God has given us all talents and giftings (even the un-saved). We should as a body of believers and worshippers start to break out of the box of comparison and make the sound God has given us...not just duplicate what someone else is doing. In other words, let's quit letting all the other BIG Christian Worship Bands dictate our tones & lyrics lets make our own! Some of us may never become BIG like them, but we'd be confident in knowing we were playing the sounds that God gave us to play!

As a side note, everything under the sun hasn't already been done! God is infinitely talented and we are made in his image!!

I get what you are saying and it is certainly a legitimate perspective. In my case though, we are given the recordings of the songs (often in a key different than what we're doing for service) and very simplified often inaccurate, chord charts, a week in advance and do not practice together at all until just before the service. I essentially learn the songs note for note like the recordings because we don't have time to "arrange" the songs one hour before the first service. So my only reference and therefore, choice, is to match the recording. That makes these tips and patches very helpful to me. I definitely come up with my own stuff on my own time, but for worship, in my case, it works best to use the recording as a template. Just don't have the time to do more.

We do the same thing at our church. Note for note. I was just adding to the earlier part of the thread where someone was trying to get pretty deep so I countered with deep! Anyway I guess I should have been clear that I have to download these patches too. So I was talking to my self as well!

I'm one of 2 lead guitar players in a church worship band (we generally alternate weeks).

On the topic of using my own tone vs. copying tones from the original recordings, I'm somewhere in between, but lean closer to using my own tone.

What I do is create several tones of my own that I really like, from crispy clean to high gain, and use those as my base sounds. I generally stick to those tones that I've created and use the appropriate patch for gain level, although sometimes I'll use a light gain instead of clean or something like that.

Then, when a song has a specific ambient effect or timing effect(s), I'll try to match the ambiance or timing effect as much as I can, but using my own tone as a the base tone.

For example, we recently played All The People Said Amen by Matt Maher. I created a patch with my own new clean tone (using the Tweed B-Man), and assigned a low res delay to FS4. The low res delay is set to have a single repeat using 1/16 notes and tap tempo (I just hit the tap tempo switch when the drummer clicks in at the beginning). Then I added a colordrive pedal with medium gain and also assigned it to FS4, but set it up so that when I turn off the delay, the color drive kicks in. This way I get the nice clean repeated notes for the intro and first verse, and a good medium gain sound when the song's chorus kicks in.

I use my 500X for everything, but I don't subscribe to the typical (let's sound like U2) idealogy.
Considering that live sound reinforcement is almost always in mono, I've intentionlly referted from a reasonably complex stereo setup to an entirely mono setup. I've gone so far as to globally set up my 500X with each amp in the center, and each side of the internal mixer assigned to center. No more phasing issues, complete continuity as I don't go from a mono to stereo or from stereo to mono configuration each week.

Yeah, I may not get the additional ear candy of a stereo spectrum in my aviom in-ears, but my guitar now always sits exactly where it needs to in the mix, and I feel I have a greater range of dynamics for having set it up this way.

From there, I have my standard range of tones:

Clean, Tweed, Crunch/Solo, & Spcl. (Special is usually a "morphed" tone from clean to crunch/solo, or something specific to a song)

If a greater degree of delays are needed for a particular song, I'll make that one of the Spcl presets with the song title as the preset title.

I appreciate this thread so much! And i really appreciate Tboneous comments about what is worship. I agree with most of this discussion, but i feel it does detract from the intent of this tread for sure!

That said...we as Worship Musicians should be striving for an excellence that is uniquely ours. We like many many other churches are just big "worship cover bands" we try to replicate, duplicate, & manipulate everyone else's tones and effects...which is where i appreciate the comment about how there is not many uniquely outstanding guitarists in this Christian Music era. Phil Keaggy and Lincoln Brewster are probably the top Christian Music Guitarists of All Time...and being a huge LB fan his tones are uniquely his!

God has given us all talents and giftings (even the un-saved). We should as a body of believers and worshippers start to break out of the box of comparison and make the sound God has given us...not just duplicate what someone else is doing. In other words, let's quit letting all the other BIG Christian Worship Bands dictate our tones & lyrics lets make our own! Some of us may never become BIG like them, but we'd be confident in knowing we were playing the sounds that God gave us to play!

As a side note, everything under the sun hasn't already been done! God is infinitely talented and we are made in his image!!

I most wholeheartedly agree with this statement. It's been my beef with "christian music" as it is described for well over 25 years. I recall going to the "christian book store" and perusing the records/cassettes and seeing descripters like "If you like AC/DC, then you may like Resurrection Band" and similar tags.

I think if Christian artists, or better yet, Jesus Followers would just be honest and sinceredly creative, these genre' identifiers would not be necessary. I for one, would like to see the reverse happen where secular artists find inspiration in Jesus following artists, because of the excellence of the work, and that would provide and opportunity for the message to be shared.

This is one of the reasons that I don't create presets that emulate another's work. Part of being creative, and worshiping the creator is by being genuine with it, and for me to just recreate what someone else has done is not in my opinion and honest act of worship. I use my own stock presets and then customize them accordingly with the submission to the worship leader's authority as a guage for what objectively fits. Rather than extensive delays, I might incorportate diatonic harmonies, as that is more of an honest reflection of my playing style and sensibility. We should be the ones to model creativity to the world the most, as we serve the creator of the universe. Instead, more often than not, we emulate, and market mediocraty.

The one that sounds best with you playing it in the particular group of musicians and their gear. In other words, there's no right/wrong answer. Each component of the band/team should complement the others and the group as a whole (one body/many parts).

I could pick up your guitar, play through your rig, the same songs, and sound completely different.

I would have you ask this question to your bandmates in rehearsal, and the worship leader if this sound fits what his vision was sonically that he was trying to reinforce spiritually. As your spiritual leader, and authority for your given role, he should be able to give you some direction.

After using a Boss ME-25 for the most part of the last two years or so, I finally upgraded to the HD500x (obviously wow what a difference, not even comparable). I've only used it once at church so far, but I believe I have it setup fairly well for 95% of worship music situations:

Patch basically looks like this:

Vol Pedal

Tube Comp

Screamer

RAT(Classic) Distortion (I also play in a Spanish church with my wife, and a few songs have fairly heavy distortion, so this may be fairly optional)

AC30 Amp with what I believe is a Celestion 25 modeled speaker

Delay One - Set to Dotted 8th

Delay Two - Set to 1/4 notes

Reverb (Hall I believe)

Noise Gate (I play a Strat, so this may be optional as well)

I have the settings to use pedalboard mode and just saved this as "Worship" in the user presets.

I can't think of much else that I'd need for worship, unless it just a funky song that maybe required a wah or something, but that'd be fairly rare. Hope it helps! Keep it simple though - slight overdrive and unobtrusive delay will get you through in most situations.

I started with the B-man, a tube screamer, and digital delay, then started building individual patches for each song that I could recall next time we did that song. Now I'm back to a single patch - Screamer into PhD Motorway, delay and reverb. Last week I ran my DD-20 through the effects loop and my Fulldrive 2 into the front end. It's a lot of work, but it sounds fantastic. I know it's backward from what so many people do, but I just love having so many amp options while still running direct.